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Tuesday, January 9, 2018

More Random Greyhawk Lore

Howdy Greyfolk! My last post on random Greyhawk lore was so fun that I'm gonna throw some more out. Ready? Let's get to it...

Greyhawk Adventures (on Vampire Cacti)

"Vampire cacti resemble century plants, with 12 fleshy leaves each tipped with a sharp needle about 1 inch long. Sprouting from the plant's central core is a single spike rising to a height of 5-6 feet...Once every midsummer a single small flower blooms at the top of the central spike. This flower is blood-red in color. After this flower has been pollinated, a small blood-red fruit forms. This fruit is moist and sweet-tasting, and almost irresistible to most birds...Vampire cacti are usually surrounded by the skeletons and drained corpses of warm-blooded denizens of the desert...Creatures of the Bright Desert, vampire cacti evolved their blod-draining abilities to help meet their water needs....Migrating birds seem to have carried the seeds of vampire cacti to the margins of the Dry Steppes, and even to the forbidding Sea of Dust...."

Bonus: In the Greyhawk Adventures: Monstrous Compendium supplement, vampire cacti are found on the "temperate desert" random encounter chart (same chance as a blue dragon or pyro-hydra). Vampire cacti are not however, found on the "tropical desert" chart.

Against the Giants: Liberation of Geoff (on adventuring party, the Golden Circle)

"The Golden Circle is an older adventuring group that has traveled much of the Flanaess. The original members first met in the City of Greyhawk and explored parts of the Cairn Hills and Rift Canyon, eventually specializing in missions that involved sneaking behind enemy lines, including one short-lived venture into the lands of Iuz....Currently under the employ of Grand Duke Owen I of Geoff, the Golden Circle are charged with discovering a way to return the lands of Geoff to its previous owners. The whole group is currently in Pest's Crossing...Torm is the leader of the Circle, having taken that role several years ago when their paladin departed to team up with some paladins of Mayaheine on a quest to reclaim the Shield Lands."Bonus: In the same module,Torm (no relation to the namesake Faerun deity) is a priest of Pelor god of the sun. The Circle also includes two thieves, a ranger, and an enchanter. There is another adventuring party called the Dark Star Guardians, who are also undercover in Pest's Crossing trying to dislodge the giants.Rary the Traitor (on the ruins of Utaa)

"Utaa was once the thriving capital of Sulm. Sand has eaten up most of the city now, leaving only a central hub of palaces and temples rising above the desert floor...from time to time, the wind reveals a building or two, allowing entrance and possible exploration...The city is truly vast. It consists of over 100 square miles of homes, temples, castles, palaces, and every other imaginable type structure. It was swallowed up by the desert...and the city still contains substantial amounts of wealth...The city may also serve as an entrance to or exit from the Underdark, for many of the city's palaces and castles featured deep dungeons...."

Bonus: For an ancient city, Utaa must've been the biggest city in the history of the Oerik if not Oerth. I highly doubt any other city in the Flanaess takes up 1/3 of a map hex. For comparison ruins of ancient middle eastern cities like Ur and Babylon only cover 3-4 square miles; their actual pre-ruin area thus is doubtfully as big as Utaa. For further reference, modern cities are ginormous, like New York (5400 sq. mi. metro) and Tokyo (4300 sq. mi.) Present day Rome is only about 500 sq. miles however, so it stands to reason Utaa was at least on par with one of the greatest ancient cities in our history.

The Temple of Elemental Evil (on random sentient swords)

"When developing encounter areas...use items from the following table if magical treasure is indicated by random roll...

Bonus: (spoiler) The same module has several other more powerful sentient/aligned swords that are non-random. Good luck finding them, yet your chances of locating those are better than the 1 in 100 chance of stumbling onto one of the two blades above. Side note, a weapon that speaks azer is pretty damn rare (they are an elemental fire race first seen in the MM2) and useful in this module. Plus, I'm rusty on AD&D, what is human common versus regular common?

4 comments:

Common vs. human common looks like a typo or editing screw-up to me, Mike, which T1-4 is riddled with....

Another possibility: there are multiple "common" tongues used by different cultures/races: human common, elven common, dragon common (Draconic in 3e), giants common (how else can all those G1-3 giants conspire together?), Lower Planar common (infernal in 3e), et al.

I like Common as a concept, but still prefer to leverage individual human, demi-human, humanoid, and monster languages rather than creating more reasons not to use individual tongues: a tragedy of the Commons, perhaps? ;)

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